Unfortunately, I think it’s often just a positive feedback loop.
If I see a obviously very alert and wary female jogger and her dog acts nervous or aggressive I’m not going to stop, bend down and scritch it behind the ears saying “who’s a good girl, who’s a good girl, you are!” So the dog has no reason to get over my stranger-ness.
Similarly, if a black person already figures dogs don’t like black people then when a dog reacts fearful or nervous or aggressive, the black person is also not likely to bend down and make friends with a stupid dog.
OTOH, if a white person (for instance) encounters another white person and both people are “dog people” then when the dog seems nervous & fearful the strange white person is much more likely to bend down, saying “oh, wassamatter? Oh, don’t be afraid, I’m not going to hurt you! C’mere! Good boy, good boy!”
So the dog checks white people strangers off its list of strangers to not like.
My sweetie claims one of our dogs reacts differently to black people than she does to white people, but I have to say I don’t see it. I think the pooch barks at everyone equally.
Years ago I had a friend/co-worker whose border collie mix hated black people. It didn’t make sense until I found out that her father was very prejudiced and he often took care of the dog and took it a lot of places with him.
I live on Bainbridge Island, an affluent Seattle suburb with embarrassingly few minorities. Our dog snarls at most strangers, including the few Black people on the island.
Hi folks. If you can, can you post the breed of your dog which appears to show or does not appear to show racial prejudice? I think that would be interesting to see.
My dog, a Bull Terrier, isn’t racist which is a ridiculous thought to start with, but he has some sort of hatred for Huskies. Plays well with all other breeds, but Huskies are going to get a beat down without question nor hesitation. Doesn’t matter if he has met them before or not, it’s war and Huskies are the Nazis and he is Aldo The Apache.
As for a dogs reaction to people, it has more to do with the way the people around the dog are acting than anything else. If a dog things there is something wrong, and no one steps up to take charge, the dog generally will become dominant aggressive and sort things out dog style.
My dog lives with my mother and stepdad (Indian folks) and has no problem with their non-Indian friends. He intensely dislikes black people and very pale white people.
Growing up we had a racist female Irish Setter. The suburb I grew up in was almost 100% white with a (very) few hispanics. My parents did not have any black friends and since there weren’t any in our high school, neither did we kids at the time. The first time she saw a black person, she went absolutely crazy - snarling, barking and foaming at the mouth. The embarrassing thing was that we were in the car at the time and she was doing it at a black family in the car next to us - through two sets of closed windows (it was winter). She had never seen a black person before (I did have a hispanic friend that she was ok with but she was pretty light skinned) and I think it just freaked her out. She never got over it.
I currently have a rescue dog (beagle mix) who freaks out at people wearing/doing anything that doesn’t make them look like people. This includes hats (he even barks at me when I wear a hat), puffy coats, backbacks and people riding bikes. He’s ok with people of other races as long as they’re not wearing/doing any of the aforementioned.
My cocker spaniel had the opposite reaction to black people. He liked to hump them. My high school teammates would drop by my moms house. Jack ignored the white guys, but he was all over the black ones. Maybe he wanted to dominate them?
I haven’t noticed any difference in my three dogs’ reactions to different races except one. One of my dogs appears confused and frightened by black people, particularly in low-light conditions. There isn’t much of a black population where I live, so it’s a rare occurrence, but it still embarrasses me.
This is the same dog that barked both at a large cardboard box that had been moved from its normal spot and her own shadow on the wall near dusk.
My ex’s dog used to be racist. She was abused by a puppy by a black man, so for the longest time she would bark madly at tall men and black men. Eventually she stopped barking at our old neighbor who was black once she realized he wasn’t going to invade her territory. The prejudice against tall men lasted a little longer until we got a roommate who was 6’3". He gave her treats every day and now she loves him.
I’ve had several dogs but only one had a problem with black people. I swear it wasn’t how we raised him!
He once busted our front window trying to get to the mailman. Luckily for the mailman there were bars separating them!
In college, one of the guys in my Fraternity had adopted a dog (random mutt) from the Philadelphia pound. We don’t know her history, and she usually was a lovely dog, but absolutely hated black kids.
My dog, a Weimaraner, doesn’t like black people, particularly black men. My girlfriend and I are white. The dog’s been like this ever since I picked her up from Weim Rescue at 6 months of age. She has mellowed a lot since then (she’s 10 now.) She likes women though, especially ones with noticeable (ahem) secondary sexual characteristics. She’ll walk up to them with a tennis ball in her mouth, look at them, wag, drop the ball at their feet, and back up a foot or two. I guess she correlates “big boobs” with “cannot throw the ball very far”. At that point, the race of the thrower doesn’t matter much. Weims aren’t generally much for anyone who’s not “their people.” I’m not saying she’s aggressive, but rather that she ignores anyone she doesn’t know, and she isn’t in a hurry to meet new people. Contrast that with the Lab I used to own, that preferred meeting strangers—white, black, Hispanic, you name it—over hanging around us.
It may be as Needscoffee described with the dog not liking anyone in dark clothing. I came in from the cold wearing a heavy dark coat and she went off, barking loudly and running to the other side of the apartment. Didn’t stop for many seconds until I convinced her it was me, then it was all tail wagging and hand licking. But yeah, I’d consider my dog racist, in as much as the concept’s applicable to a dog.
I don’t think my dog was racist (min pin). She wouldn’t really care for people as we walked unless approached and strangers wouldn’t approach me generally. Although we’d walk passed a black person she could care less. It was only other dogs that kept her attention, and on top of that vermin like raccoons, skunks and squirrels, and birds to a certain extent. I could get her to sic cats if i goaded her to but she didn’t really mind them all that much unless they got too close for her liking. I think she was more wary of odd people. People with a limp or disability more than appearance.
I don’t think she came across a lot of black people in her life but the ones that she did see she didn’t really have a huge anger towards them. Being of asian descent I guess she thought she was gonna be bound to be food eventually (joke). I wanted to write something on her collar to that effect. “20 pounds = ripe to eat” she was at her highest weight 19pounds and a few ounces.
THings that really got her going was the doorbell throughout her life, vermin mostly when she was young (sprayed by a skunk at night in the backyard) and me when i sic her or goad her to something. Another minor thing was bike riders.
She mellowed a lot after she had her first and only litter of 6 pups. She was spayed about a year after that litter with one of her female pups at the same time.
